The inspirations and origins for our stories.

It came from Tomas Marcantonio

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Tomas Marcantonio’s story “Unmasked” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 31 May 2019. I’ve always enjoyed reading about dystopian societies, especially ones where the main characters are in the dark about their pasts or the nature of their worlds. The set-up and slow uncovering of the truth is usually the highlight of these stories, but I wanted to write something that challenged the reader even after the “grand reveal”. Min-soo, the protagonist of “Unmasked”, spends …

It came from Nicholas M. Stillman

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Nicholas M. Stillman’s story “The Memory Dresser” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 24 May 2019. This story started, like most stories, with an observation. I was sitting in bed with my then-wife, and she was holding out her hair to me, clipped off like held by imaginary scissors. I want to get my hair cut to here, she said. Her eyes pinched and she looked closely at the strands. But it’s hard. Think of …

It came from David Cleden

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David Cleden’s story “In the Beating of a Wing” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 17 May 2019. I work from home a lot and one day I looked up from my computer to see a pretty little moth on the outside of the window. I watched it for a while, assuming it would soon fly away, but it didn’t. It walked across the glass to the corner of the window nearest my desk and …

It came from Phoenix Alexander

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Phoenix Alexander’s story “One for the Wounded” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 10 May 2019. I was visiting family in Cyprus in the summer of 2018 and reading Alexander Chee’s The Queen of the Night in the lazy, languid, 110-degree days. The sensory richness of the novel – the heightened emotion and drama of the narrative, the piled-on details of cloth and scent and stone – inspired me to try to write something similarly …

It came from Katrina Smith

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Katrina Smith’s story “Somewhere to be Going” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 3 May 2019. I have an obsession with birds who leave their young to be fostered by different species, and I have a fifteen year old son. Over the years, he’s given me motivation when I’ve needed it and been my biggest fan. I’ve written him a short story for his birthday nearly every year since he learned to read. Sometimes these …

It came from Luke Murphy

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Luke Murphy’s story “A Sacrifice for the Queen” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 26 April 2019. I wanted to submit a story to an anthology on the theme of alien invasions. I had a spark of an idea: I was intrigued by how, in the ancient world, a city might have its own deity. Athena, for example, was the goddess of Athens. I asked myself what that would look like in the modern world. …